My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Wednesday, the fifteenth of November. I'm Emma Gillespie.
I'm Billy fitz Simon's Emma. I feel like we haven't even given the context of why we are filling in this week. Oh, we just felt like, no, we are filling in for Salm and Zara this week whilst they are away overseas on a special work trip.
That's right, we're filling in this week, but Sam and Zara will be back on the podcast next week. You may have heard mention of ceasefire.
A national call for Israel to cease fire is growing.
As military and humanitarian calling for.
A humanitarian humanitarian pauses in the fighting.
We also mentioned on the podcast on Monday that Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she and others wanted to see steps taken towards a ceasefire in Gaza.
We all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire.
So what is a ceasefire? How is it different to a humanitarian pause? And what's happening in Gaza now? Will let you know in the deep dive, But first, what's making headlines?
Billy students in Victoria have disrupted question time after a climate strike in state Parliament. A small group of protesters from School Strike for Climate held up signs that red coal is killing us, with banners pointing to national student led climate strikes across the country.
This Friday, The Arias are being held in Sydney tonight. It's the Australian music industry's biggest annual awards ceremony, with the Kid Laroi, Kylie Minogue and The Wiggles among the nominees. Troy Savanne, who's up for six awards, will also be presenting one and fellow nominee Jessica Melboy is performing. The ceremony starts at five pm Australian Eastern daylight time. It'll be live streamed on STAN with a broadcast on Channel nine.
Later in the evening, a rescue is underway to save almost forty Indian workers trapped in a Himalayan highway tunnel. The workers have been trapped for two days after a tunnel collapsed in North India. Excavators were brought in to dig out debris and create a roue to reach the workers to pull them to safety.
And today's good news, the Kenyan government has announced a public holiday dedicated to planting one hundred million seedlings as part of a goal to plant fifteen billion trees by twenty thirty two in Kenya. It's hoping to increase the amount of rainforest coverage in the country and fight climate change, with every Kenyan encouraged to plant at least two seedlings billy. Today, we're talking about the crisis in Israel and Gaza, where we've been watching horrific violence unfold for more than a
month now and the death tolls continue to climb. In the last few weeks, though, we've seen governments from around the world talk about these concepts of a ceasefire and humanitarian pauses, and these terms have come up a lot during the major protests that we've seen around the world. So I wanted to take an opportunity to step back and explain what these terms actually mean, how and why they're different, and whether we can expect to see either of them happen.
It is certainly one of the biggest stories in the world right now. And before we explain the difference between a ceasefire and humanitarian pauses, could you first just give us an overview of the latest update on what's been happening in Israel and Gaza.
So, this most recent bout of violence began on October seven. That's when Hamas, which Australia lists as a terrorist organization and is in control of Gaza, launched an attack on Israel. That attack killed an estimated twelve hundred people. Now it is worth mentioning that number has jumped around a little bit because at first it wasn't fully clear just how many people were killed in the attacks. But twelve hundred is the latest figure that's been provided by Israel's Foreign Ministry.
And during the October seven attacks, Hamas also captured about two hundred and forty hostages.
And on those two hundred and forty hostages, I do remember that we have done reporting on some of those hostages being released, Is that right?
That's correct, So most of the hostages are still being held in Gaza during all of this that four of them were released and one other hostage was rescued by Israeli forces. Israel responded to the October seven attack by declaring war, and since then we have seen a ground invasion in Gaza by Israel, with at least eleven thousand
people killed in Gaza since October seven. That's according to Gaza's health ministry, which is run by Hamas, But the World Health Organization did tell the BBC this week that they have confidence in the Gaza health ministries figures. However, these figures actually haven't been updated for a few days now, and that's because the ministry's communications in Gaza are down.
So that's some very brief context about why this latest violence broke out. Can you give us an update on what the situation in Gaza is?
So? The UN chief Antonio Guterres recently described the situation in Gaza as a quote graveyard for children, and more recently, particularly this week, we've been hearing a lot of alarms raised about hospitals in Gaza being attacked and two of the strip's major hospitals shutting their doors to new patients, the World Health Organizations. Ted DROs Gabriosos has expressed his concerns about how Garz's healthcare system is struggling to cope with so many patients.
The situation on the ground is impossible to describe. Hospital corridors crimed with the injured, the sick, the dying, morgues, overflowing surgery without anaesthesia, tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals, families crammed into overcrowded schools, desperate for food and water.
So it's been over a month since the initial seventh of October attack, and in recent weeks there have been a lot of calls for the violence to stop, in particular violence causing civilian deaths. Last week there was a bit of a breakthrough when Israel agreed to what's known as a humanitarian pause.
So the question that we are focusing on today is what is a humanitarian pause and in particular, how does it differ from a seasfire.
Yeah, I think this is a really important one because there has been confusion for many of us. It might be the first time we're hearing these kinds of terms discussed in the media, but they're not the same thing. A humanitarian pause is defined by the UN as a temporary cessation of hostilities purely for humanitarian purposes.
That sounds like a very official definition. What does it actually mean.
This idea of a pause applies to all sides of a conflict. So in this case, Israel and Humas to come to an agreement to stop fighting for a short period, and during that time, sick and wounded civilians could get humanitarian relief and medical assistance, or civilians could be given a way of leaving a conflict zone, so in this case northern Gaza, so that pause provides a window for
aid and movement. Several countries, including the US, one of Israel's closest allies, and Australia were pushing for Israel to implement these humanitarian pauses as a way for civilians in Gaza to flee. Last week, Israel announced it would agree to four hour daily humanitarian pauses.
So Israel has said that they do agree to these daily humanitarian pauses in practice, what does that actually look like?
So Israel Defense Forces said that it had agreed to what it described as tactical local pauses during which civilians can move south from the conflict zone in northern Gaza via humanitarian corridors so safe passages to get away from the fighting. Basically, the UN has confirmed that in light of these pauses, quote, tens of thousands of people have fled the north of Gaza through a corridor opened by the Israeli military.
Now, the White House provided a bit more detail on how these pauses would actually work. What did it say?
Yeah, so, the White House spokesperson John Kirby mapped it out like this. He said, the pause is focused in northern Gaza, where a lot of fighting between Israel and Hamas has been taking place, including heavy bombardments. A humanitarian pause is announced three hours before it takes effect. Civilians can get out of the north and travel to safe areas in the south through two humanitarian corridors, and the pause lasts for a duration of four hours. Right.
But as I understand that these pauses don't mean an end to the violence. They're simply a pause on it. A ceasefire, on the other hand, that is the question that we are focusing on today. The difference between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause. So what is a ceasefire?
So we've talked about pauses and this idea of a temporary measure or break in conflict that gives civilians the chance to leave a conflict zone and maybe access aid, but there isn't really any guarantee that violence will stop in the long run when we're talking about pauses. On the other hand, though, a ceasefire is a longer term idea.
So ceasefires mean all sides commit to not firing any weapons and it would see both sides entering talks, so negotiations sometimes hosted by a third party to come to an agreement to end the conflict. Israel and Hamas have come to many ceasefire agreements before. So two years ago fighting broke out between the two sides, and Egypt actually held talks that led to a ceasefire being declared after eleven days.
Right, and focusing on the present day, who has been calling for a ceasefire?
One of the loudest voices in the ceasefire conversation has been the UN Chief Antonio Guterres. So he has been pretty vocal, consistently telling the media about the horrors of the violence in Gaza. The UN adopted a resolution last month that called for a quote immediate, durable and humanitarian truce. Jordan's ambassador, that's the country that brought the resolution to the UN said and I quote an urgent need that
an immediate ceasefire cannot be overstated. Israel and the US voted against the resolution, and Australia didn't vote on it at all. It said that the resolution didn't outwardly condemn the actions of Harmas on the seventh of October. More recently, the President of France, Emanuel Macron, also called for a ceasefire. He was interviewed by the BBC and said, there needs to be a way to stop the ever growing death toll from building and building.
To the civilian submont. All people are bombed and killed, so there is no reason for that. Then I called for his fire, and I will urge them for his fire for and many turns his fire.
Macron did clarify that Hamas committed terrorist acts on the seventh of October, he did outwardly condemn those, and he also said that Israel had a right to defend itself.
And how did Israel react to that. In terms of Macron's comments.
Over and over again, we've seen Israel reject calls for a ceasefire throughout this conflict. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently said there won't be any ceasefire until all remaining hostages have been released from Gaza. Well, there will be no ceasefire, general cesfire and Gaza without the release of our hostages. And basically leaders in Israel have said there will be no cease fire until the hostages are freed.
Okay, So we've focused a lot on what other countries have had to say about this conflict, but what has Australia had to say in all of this.
Australia formally supported calls for a humanitarian pause, that it hasn't gone as far as France as we saw Macron doing in that interview with the BBC in calling for a ceasefire. However, Foreign Minister Pennywong deviated a little bit from the government's official wording during an interview over the weekend on the ABC's Insiders program.
I've seen the comments of President Macron overnight. What I would say is we all want to take the next steps towards a ceasefire, but it cannot be one sided. How Mars still holds hostages, haw Mars is still attacking Israel.
If we look around the world at the protests going on in support of and against all sides of this, it doesn't seem like this conversation is going anywhere. So hopefully we've helped you understand a little bit more today about humanitarian pauses, and as we learn more about this unfolding situation, we will continue to bring it to you in this podcast.
Thank you so much for joining us on the Daily OS. We will be back tomorrow